Personal To My Immigrant Gardner

Dear Immigrant Gardner:

I'm writing this in my blog because I can't call you (you don't speak English) and I can't write you personally (you don't read English - we went through that once already when I tried to thank you in a note for a job well done and you panicked and thought I was firing you and you had to have your son come over and clear things up). I'm just hoping that someone who speaks your language will see this and translate it for you.

It's bad enough that you use all power equipment, trimmers, weedeaters, mowers and that unspeakable blower, thereby fouling the atmosphere, polluting the neighborhood with unbelievable noise and probably adding to global warming, but do you have to start mowing my lawns at 7:01 in the morning? I mean, for crissakes, it's OCTOBER, not July, and the hottest it's going to get is 76 and that isn't until five o'clock in the afternoon.

I appreciate your ambition in coming to this country and starting your lawn service, I really do, but I assume you knew that lawns are generally planted outdoors, so you'd be working in the sun. I also assume you knew it was going to be hot here in the summer. That was your choice, pal. For your service I pay you $60/month, which, considering the time you spend here, works out to $60/hour, which I don't think is too bad as your only expenses are for your little truck, well, plus all the gas you must use in those noisy damn tools.

I sort of understood your early-morning mow jobs during the blazing days of summer -- although, you really could spend your 15 minutes on my property from 9:00 to 9:15 and not fry your ass; HOWEVER, "summer" was over nearly a month ago, and I'm sick of waking up to that racket.

Can you imagine -- now, think about it carefully -- can you IMAGINE what it's like to be sound asleep then all of a sudden have a trimmer, weedeater, mower and unspeakable blower throttling the air particles right outside your bedroom windows? Do you have a clue what it's like to wake up to all that noise? Do you know how many times this summer I've peed my bed because of you? Human beings are just NOT MEANT to wake up to gas-powered devices. And I'm NOT going to keep shutting my windows and breathing stale, farty air just because you want to avoid a little sun.

My sleeping pills don't even kick in until after two a.m., and I'll be damned if I'm going to wake up one more morning with that buzz-saw noise in my ear. If you feel that you have to start that damn early, start at someone else's house and get to mine after nine o'clock.

There is no reason on earth why one small person (you) has to make that quantity of noise so early in the morning and wake up your customer (me) with that god-awful racket. No reason. None. Stop it! Stop it right now, or I swear to God I'm going to put an ad on Craigslist for a herd of goats that won't wake me up with their teeth. I mean it - stop it.